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Reining In the Regulators

For all its rabid partisanship, Congress has shown time and again that it is willing to come together to deregulate corporate America. The latest example is a new bill in the Senate that would effectively end the independence of independent regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.

Introduced by Republicans Rob Portman and Susan Collins and Democrat Mark Warner, the measure, if enacted, would scotch any remaining hope for putting the Dodd-Frank financial reform law fully into practice anytime soon — if ever. In the long run, it would benefit powerful corporate interests over investor protection, consumer health and safety and basic fairness.

Unlike cabinet departments and executive agencies, independent agencies do not report to the White House. They are overseen by Congress, which deemed them independent to insulate them from pressure by the executive branch and to keep them focused on their public missions.

The Senate bill, called the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act of 2013, would require such agencies to submit all significant draft rules to the White House for review. The stated goal is to ensure that new rules appropriately balance costs and benefits. In reality, White House review, first established in 1980 to vet draft regulations from executive agencies, has long proved to be an obstacle to timely and strong regulation.

The review process often adds lengthy delays to already arduous rule-making procedures, in large part because corporations use it as an opportunity to lobby for favorable treatment. It is opaque and also politicized, as shown most recently by the Obama administration in 2012, when it delayed important rules in an attempt to coddle industry and avoid Republican criticism in an election year, creating a regulatory backlog that persists to this day.

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Subjecting independent agencies to executive regulatory review would not improve the rule-making process, but it would ensure that ostensibly regulated industries are as unregulated and deregulated as possible.

Even the bill’s Senate proponents admit as much, though not intentionally. In June, Mr. Portman posted a supportive letter on his Web site from 10 “current and former” top officials of independent regulatory agencies. Several of the signatories are now lobbyists or lawyers for corporate clients that are regulated by the independent agencies. The only signatory who is a current official is Nancy Nord, a Bush appointee to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who has been a defender of industry and is set to leave the office in October.